Apple lawyers make Nokia Lumia the poster child for making phones that aren’t iPhone clones

Apple lawyers make Nokia Lumia the poster child for making phones that aren’t iPhone clones

Nokia’s (NOK) first Lumia models may not have been top sellers, but according to Apple’s (AAPL) lawyers they do have one thing going for them: They didn’t rip off the iPhone. The Seattle Times’s Janet Tu points out that during Apple’s closing arguments in the Samsung (005930)-Apple patent trial on Tuesday, Apple attorney Harold McElhinny held up a Nokia Lumia device to demonstrate that “not every smartphone needs to look like an iPhone.” Of course, this isn’t that much comfort for Apple’s rivals since the top-selling smartphones right now — namely, the Samsung Galaxy S III and the iPhone itself — do tend to look like the iPhone. If Apple’s lawyers think citing the Lumia will ward off potential copycats in the future, they’re likely to be sorely mistaken.